Basic exhaust hoods use an exhaust blower to create a negative pressure zone to draw effluent-laden air directly away from the pollutant source. In kitchen hoods, the exhaust blower generally draws pollutants, including room-air, through a filter and out of the kitchen through a duct system. An exhaust blower, e.g., a variable speed fan, contained within the exhaust hood is used to remove the effluent from the room and is typically positioned on the suction side of a filter disposed between the pollutant source and the blower. Depending on the rate by which the effluent is created and the buildup of effluent near the pollutant source, the speed of exhaust blower may be manually set to minimize the flow rate at the lowest point which achieves capture and containment.
Hoods are intended to act as buffers which match the flow of fumes, which varies, to the constant rate of the exhaust system. But basic hoods and exhaust systems are limited in their abilities to buffer flow. The exhaust rate required to achieve full capture and containment is governed by the highest transient load pulses that occur. This requires the exhaust rate to be higher than the average volume of effluent (which is inevitably mixed with entrained air). Ideally the oversupply of exhaust should be minimized to avoid wasting energy. Hoods work by temporarily capturing bursts of effluent, which rise into the hood due by thermal convection and then, giving the moderate average exhaust rate time to catch up.
One problem with the buffer model is that the external environment may displace fumes and thereby add an excess burden of ambient air into the exhaust stream. This results in fumes being injected into the occupied space surrounding the hood. These transients are an on-going problem for hood design and installation. all the effluent by buffering the and containment by providing a buffer zone above the pollutant source where buoyancy-driven momentum transients can be dissipated before pollutants are extracted. By managing transients in this way, the effective capture zone of an exhaust supply can be increased.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,066,064 shows a backshelf hood with an exhaust intake located at a position that is displaced from a back end thereof. A short sloping portion rises and extends at a shallow angle toward the inlet from the back end of the hood recess.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,039 shows a backshelf hood with side skirts and sloping wall from a rear part of the hood to an inlet located near the middle of the hood. The front of the hood as a horizontal portion (baffle) that extends between about 15 percent and about 20 percent of the front to back dimension of the hood. This part is claimed to direct air in a space above the baffle toward the exhaust inlet and to direct air that is drawn from the ambient space in a horizontal direction thereby encouraging rising fumes to be deflected toward the exhaust inlet.